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Americans overwhelmingly support labeling foods that have been genetically modified or engineered, according to a New York Times poll conducted this year, with 93 percent of respondents saying that foods containing such ingredients should be identified.

Three-quarters of Americans expressed concern about genetically modified organisms in their food, with most of them worried about the effects on people's health.

Thirty-seven percent of those worried about G.M.O.'s said they feared that such foods cause cancer or allergies, although scientific studies continue to show that there is no added risk.


Comment: Scientific Studies continue to show there is no added risk? GMO's are worrisome and there is scientific studies and research that address the fears of consumers when it comes to eating GMO foods. Read the following articles for a more informed perspective on this issue:

Latest GMO Research: Decreased Fertility, Immunological Alterations and Allergies
GMO Scandal: The Long Term Effects of Genetically Modified Food in Humans
Is Monsanto trying to kill us with GMO frankenfoods?
GMO Foods Pose Higher Risks for Children
GMOs and Health: The scientific basis for serious concern and immediate action
How to Win a GMO Debate: 10 Facts Why Genetically Modified Food is Bad
How Biotech Corporations and GMO Crops are Threatening the Environment and Humankind Alike
New York Times editors ignore GMO health dangers

Think the Anti-GMO movement is unscientific? Think again
"Anyone that says, 'Oh, we know that this is perfectly safe,' I say is either unbelievably stupid, or deliberately lying. The reality is, we don't know. The experiments simply haven't been done, and now we have become the guinea pigs." ~ David Suzuki, geneticist

Now that the mainstream media is catching on to the public sentiment against GMO food, or at least against unlabeled GMO food, to the tune of millions of Americans who made it a point to drag themselves out of their homes to protest Monsanto last month (as well as at least 40 additional countries), inevitably the indictment will be made: "the anti-GMO movement is "unscientific."" Is that really so?

What we do know is that the unintended consequences of the recombinant DNA process employed to create genetically engineering organisms are beyond the ability of present-day science to comprehend. This is largely due to the post-Human Genome Project revelation that the holy grail of molecular biology, the overly-simplified 'one gene > one trait' model, is absolutely false...

The problem, of course, is that the burden of proving safety or toxicity falls on the exposed populations (Suzuki's "guinea pigs"), which only after many years of chronic exposure reveal the harms in their diseases, and then only vaguely in hard-to-prove post-marketing surveillance and epidemiological associations and linkages.

So, with this in mind, let's bring up one dimension of the toxicity of GM foods and agriculture that cannot be thrown out as 'unscientific,' because it is clearly proven to be a health problem in the peer-reviewed and published literature: Roundup herbicide.

Among those with concerns, 26 percent said these foods are not safe to eat, or are toxic, while 13 percent were worried about environmental problems that they fear might be caused by genetic engineering.

Nearly half of Americans said they were aware that a large amount of the processed or packaged foods they now buy at the grocery store contains genetically modified ingredients. And although just a handful of G.M.O. crops are on the market, about 4 in 10 respondents said they thought that most or a lot of their fruits and vegetables were genetically modified.

Overall concern was higher among women than men, perhaps not surprisingly, as more women identify themselves as the principal grocery shopper in the household.

Americans were almost equally divided about eating genetically modified vegetables, fruits and grains, with about half saying they would not eat them.

They were even less comfortable about eating meat from genetically engineered animals: three-quarters said they would not eat G.M.O. fish, and about two-thirds said they would not eat meat that had been modified.

The national telephone poll was conducted from Jan. 24 to 27 with 1,052 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.